


The Truth

by summers-maclay-lehane (ofstormsandwolves)



Series: Sunnydale 2019 [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Foster Care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofstormsandwolves/pseuds/summers-maclay-lehane
Summary: After hearing what Principal Snyder had to say about their daughters, Gwen, Joyce, and Giles decide it's time to clear the air. And it seems Buffy and Faith aren't going to get much of a say in it...
Relationships: Rupert Giles/Joyce Summers
Series: Sunnydale 2019 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1377481
Kudos: 25





	The Truth

“B? Please tell me you know what this is about.”

There was a pleading quality to Faith’s voice even as she tried to hide it. It was Saturday, two days after the dreaded Parent-Teacher night where Snyder had ambushed Buffy’s and Faith’s parents, and said parents were now inexplicably holed up in the dining room at Revello Drive.

“It can’t be _that_ bad,” Buffy said, sounding unconvinced. “I mean, Mom and Giles seemed pretty cool about everything this morning.”

Faith let out an exasperated sigh and flopped back against the couch cushions. The girls had been sent to the sitting room, told to watch television or something while the adults talked. Like they were little kids who couldn’t be trusted.

“I don’t like this,” Faith complained. “I don’t trust Snyder as far as I can throw him.”

“You say that about a lot of people,” Buffy pointed out with a slight smirk.

“Yeah, well,” Faith responded. “I _mean_ it about a lot of people.”

Despite the reassurances from their parents that there was nothing to worry about, neither girl was entirely sure that that was true, and the continued secrecy had made the day and a half since Parent-Teacher night a complete nightmare.

“You think they’d know if we listened in?” Faith asked after several long moments.

Buffy glanced at her friend. “Maybe,” she said slowly. “Maybe not.”

Faith grinned. “Then let’s do it.”

* * *

In the dining room, Gwen, Joyce, and Giles were all seated at the table, looking for all the world like they were chairing some very important meeting.

“I think it’s best we’re all honest with one another,” Gwen said calmly. “The last thing we want is Principal Snyder having any ammunition against us.”

“I agree,” Joyce said, though she looked a little wary. “Maybe Rupert and I should start? A lot of the things Principal Snyder told you about Buffy are... Out of context, shall we say?”

Gwen inclined her head at that, urging Joyce to continue. Joyce glanced briefly at her husband for support, before speaking again.

“The last year or so in Los Angeles, with Buffy in her first year of high school, wasn’t exactly... Good.” Joyce fiddled with her wedding band as she spoke, unable to keep from fidgeting. “Buffy’s father had grown more and more distant from her since Rupert and I got engaged, to the point where Buffy hardly got to see him. She never really talked to us about it, always insisted that she was fine, that she understood her dad was working, but we knew it bothered her. She had adored Hank growing up, and while we tried to shield Buffy from much of the fallout from the divorce...” Joyce shrugged, a pained look on her face, and Giles reached across to squeeze her hand.

“Buffy can be quite perceptive when she wants to be,” Giles said to Gwen. “And while we never told her the truth behind many of her father’s cancellations, we think she knew more than she let on.”

Gwen’s brow furrowed at that, and Joyce gave a watery, pained laugh. “He was sleeping with his secretary,” Joyce said bitterly. “He never even told Buffy about the relationship, said that it was nothing permanent. But it was permanent enough for him to cancel plans with his daughter.”

Sensing his wife needed a moment, Giles took over the explanation then. “All of this was going on just as Buffy was due to start high school, and we were really quite concerned about how it would affect her. Not only was she struggling with not seeing her father as often as she’d like, but she was also starting a new school. So we were pleasantly surprised when she seemed to have no problems fitting in.” Giles smiled slightly at that. “She made it onto the cheer squad, something she was very excited about, and was soon spending lots of time with her new friends both in and out of school. Given the strain between her and Hank, we thought it best to let her have a little bit of freedom. She seemed happy enough, and so we tried not to pry too much.”

“We asked about them, of course,” Joyce chipped in. “Offered for her to have friends round on the weekend, or throw a slumber party. But she always made excuses. We assumed it was just Buffy trying to act older, not wanting us cramping her style. It wasn’t until towards the end of the school year that we found out the truth. Buffy’s so-called friends were all older than her, juniors and seniors from the cheer squad or football team. She’d been dating a seventeen year old boy we’d never even met. The children had peer-pressured her into bullying other people, threatening to kick her off the cheer squad if she didn’t do as they said.” 

She trailed off, shaking her head and taking a moment to compose herself. “The first we knew about it was when the police showed up at our door. Buffy had snuck out her bedroom window, gone out with her boyfriend and some other boys, and they’d gone to the school. They wouldn’t tell Buffy what they were planning, and she was so desperate to not be teased or bullied that she went along with it. She thought it was just some graffiti on the side of the gym block, something the janitor would wash off the walls and forget about. But some boys started messing around with matches and spray cans, and one of them caught fire. They panicked, and threw the can, and it went through the window and set fire to the gym. The children ran, and Buffy was dumped back home, and an hour later the police were on the doorstep to take her to the station.”

Gwen had listened to the whole explanation with a mild look of surprise on her face but nothing more. “I see,” she said calmly. “And what happened with the police?”

“Buffy explained everything,” Giles said. “There was a court hearing, of course, but one of the older boys- ah, Pike, I think his name was- testified that Buffy had had nothing to do with the fire, and hadn’t even known what the plan had been, so she was let off with a fine. The school, however, was less lenient, and she was expelled before the end of the school year.”

“The other children?” Gwen asked. “What did they say? Is Buffy still in contact with them?”

“She’s not,” Joyce said quickly. “I even check her phone and social media regularly to make sure. Most of the other children wouldn’t say much to the police at all, and a few of them had been caught vandalising things before, but Buffy had never been involved in anything like that.”

There was a tense silence then, as Gwen seemed to absorb this information. Then, she nodded. “It seems our Principal Snyder likes to embellish the truth,” she said at last. 

With a relieved look on her face, Joyce couldn’t help but let out a small laugh.

* * *

“Are- Are they talking about _us_?” Faith whispered, frowning at Buffy as they huddled together on the stairs.

“I think so,” Buffy admitted, looking a little embarrassed. “Maybe listening in wasn’t such a good idea.”

Faith either didn’t notice Buffy’s unease, or had chosen to ignore it. “Why?” she whispered back as the adults continued talking in the next room. “It’s nothing I’ve not heard before, B. You already told me you burnt down the gym at your old school.”

“I didn’t-” Buffy protested instinctively, before catching the small smirk on her friend’s face. She sighed. “It’s not nice to tease, you know.”

“It may not be nice,” Faith countered, “but it _is_ fun.”

They lapsed into silence as they strained to hear what the adults were saying.

“B?” Faith said softly after a few moments.

Buffy looked round to see Faith staring at her with a furrowed brow and an uneasy expression on her face. “Yeah?”

“You- You know I don’t mean, it right? The teasing? I know you didn’t really burn the gym at your old school down. It’s just a joke.”

Buffy felt herself let go of some tension she didn’t even know she was holding at Faith’s words. She _had_ kind of known it was just Faith winding her up, but it was sort of nice to have it confirmed. “I know.”

But Faith was still watching her oddly. “You want me to stop?” she asked quietly. “‘Cause I will, if you want.” She shrugged. “I mean it, B. You’re my friend. I’m not looking to hurt ya.”

Buffy considered this for a moment. “It’s fine,” she said after a little while. “But maybe dial it back a bit? And maybe don’t mention it around my mom? It’s not exactly something she likes to be reminded of.”

Faith shrugged again. “Sure.”

With a smile, Buffy returned her attention to the conversation in the dining room.

* * *

“I suppose I should explain about Faith, then,” Gwen said, and there was a hint of disapproval in her tone signalling that she was none too pleased by her adopted daughter’s antics. “As you know, I’m not Faith’s biological mother. I adopted her, roughly four years ago now. She’d been in the system for several years, and had been in several foster homes. None of them lasted very long, due to Faith’s defiance of the rules, and as such she had very little structure in her life.” A rare, wry smile tugged at the corner of Gwen’s mouth then. “I’m quite certain everyone thought I was mad when I petitioned to adopt her. But I could see that she was a very sweet, smart girl when she wanted to be, and with the right environment and a stable upbringing I knew she could do very well for herself. Nobody else seemed to see that, though, and even her social worker had written her off as a problem child.”

Giles and Joyce listened to this with slightly furrowed brows, concerned by the sort of picture this was painting of Faith’s childhood.

“I’d been living in Boston for nearly five years when I adopted Faith, working at Boston University lecturing in Archaeology. I met Faith by chance, with her elementary school bringing fourth graders to the university for an activity day. She was loud, argumentative, stubborn... But when I actually sat and worked with her, I found that she was acutely clever. Things transpired, and by the end of the year I’d successfully adopted her. A year and a half later, I got a job offer at the University of Southern California and we moved here to Sunnydale. I’d hoped that Sunnydale would provide smaller class sizes than if we lived in Los Angeles, and that Faith would flourish as a result. But her two years at Sunnydale junior high school were... Colourful, to say the least.”

Gwen paused then, took a sip of her tea. Giles and Joyce shared a look, not quite knowing what to expect.

“Well, Mr Snyder mentioned some troublemaking last night of course,” Giles said diplomatically, “but we all know how much he enjoys blowing things out of proportion.”

Gwen gave the man a wry smile at that. “As I said, Faith was not the sort of child who took kindly to being told what to do, at least not when she was expected to simply shut up and follow orders. I found that, if I were to explain why she needed to do what I was asking, she was generally rather good at following direction. What she doesn’t take nicely to is adults bossing her around simply because they are the grownup and she is the child. And understandably, not all of her teachers particularly liked that.”

“So what exactly happened?” Joyce asked with a frown. “Faith seems a very reasonable girl, and Rupert’s never had any complaints when the children have been studying in the library.”

Rupert nodded at that, and Gwen seemed somewhat pleased with that.

“Well,” she said with a small shrug, “clearly Faith respects Rupert’s authority. As I said, Faith’s biggest issue is with adults who seem to boss her around simply because they can. I know that some of her foster families were rather heavy-handed at times, and thought that punishing her for every little indiscretion was the way forward. Instead, it only made Faith hate them more. She’s never really talked about it, but I get the distinct impression that she felt as though they never really cared about her. In Faith’s eyes, the foster families she lived with took her in because of the money and then kicked her out when she wouldn’t follow their rules to the letter. They wanted a good little foster child with no history, and we all know that that is a ludicrous idea.”

Joyce nodded, and Giles had a concerned look on his face. Polishing his glasses, he cleared his throat.

“And I suppose Faith felt much the same about her teachers?” he enquired. “I certainly know of one or two teachers at Sunnydale high who insist upon absolute obedience in their classes and seem to have a complete inability to deal with students not being perfectly well-behaved.”

“When we were in Boston, I simply thought it was the class sizes and the fact she moved schools several times. Faith made herself stand out by being loud, stubborn, talking back to teachers. I’d hoped moving to Sunnydale would allow Faith to start afresh, leave that part of her life behind. But instead she seemed to go out of her way to cause trouble. She’d skip class; she filled the skull of the plastic skeleton in the science lab with jello; she’d get detention for arguing back to her teachers. There was never anything they could expel her for, and they never even suspended her. But the only time she would attend class and behave was for the few teachers she seemed to like. The teachers who didn’t boss everyone around, or call on children to answer questions regarding topics they didn’t understand. In short, the teachers that Faith felt respected her got her respect in return.”

“Ah,” Giles said then, a small smile on his face. “Well, that does explain Principal Snyder’s dislike of her. That man doesn’t even respect his own faculty members, let alone the students.” 

“Buffy said he found her on the first day of school when she’d got lost on the way to class,” Joyce added. “Rather than asking if she was lost, or why she was out of class, he instead just assumed that she was causing trouble.”

“I’ll admit, until last night I had thought Faith had been exaggerating about Principal Snyder,” Gwen said. “But truthfully, I don’t think she was harsh enough about him. Why he is running a school, I don’t know.”

“Perhaps we should talk to the school board,” Joyce suggested. “We can’t be the only parents who think he’s unsuitable.”

And as the two women began eagerly discussing the option, Giles got to his feet. “How about some more tea?”

* * *

In the hallway, Buffy and Faith blinked at one another. 

“Are our moms staging a coup?” Buffy asked, half amused, half bewildered.

Faith shrugged. “Maybe we can persuade them to let us burn Snyder at the stake. Make sure he’s not some sort of demon in disguise.”

Buffy arched an eyebrow at that. “I’m fairly certain that only works for witches,” she countered. “And besides, I don’t think burning people at the stake is exactly legal.”

Getting to her feet, Faith gave a grunt of annoyance at Buffy’s remark. “Looks like we’re not going home for a while,” she said, inclining her head in the direction of the dining room, Gwen’s and Joyce’s voices audible even through the wall. “Wanna hang out in your room for a bit?”

Buffy grinned, and moments later the two teens were disappearing up the stairs.


End file.
